U.S. Supreme Court Right Shift: Just the Beginning, Experts Say

Experts say the influence of the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court will be felt for decades to come.

At the instigation of judges appointed by Donald Trump, the United States Supreme Court has made a right turn whose effects are expected to be felt for decades.

Au In the past 10 days, the highest court in the United States has struck down the right of American women to have an abortion, enshrined the right to carry a gun in public, expanded the place of religion in the public sphere and significantly limited the means federal government to fight global warming.

These decisions, adopted by the six conservative judges of the Court to the chagrin of their three progressive colleagues, are the first illustration of a powerful return of the judicial pendulum after more temperate years, sometimes marked by historic progressive stops, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015.

With their solid conservative majority, reinforced under the presidency of Donald Trump, the judges offer revenge to the Republican right which, since the 1970s, had sought to take real control of the temple of law, in order to have certain key decisions invalidated. x27; she considered excessive.

Protests took place in the United States, but also all over the world to denounce the decision of the Supreme Court to revoke the constitutional right to abortion.

During the tumultuous 2021-2022 session that ended Thursday, the Court took a dramatic and sudden turn in a much more conservative direction, analyzes Stephen Wermiel, professor of constitutional law at American University.

This is one of the few situations where the Supreme Court has radically taken away constitutional rights, he points out.

The last time a Supreme Court was relatively ideologically homogeneous was in the 1960s, when it enacted some of its most progressive reforms, recalls Neal Devins, a law expert at William & ; Mary.

Under the presidency of Judge Earl Warren (1953-1969), the temple of law radically changed the daily lives of millions of Americans, ending segregation, strengthening the power of the federal state and laying the foundations of the 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, who made abortion a right for all American women.

Earl Warren's court was vehemently denounced by conservatives, similarly that the left today attacks the work of that chaired by the conservative John Roberts.

But, unlike today, the judges did not necessarily decide the decisions the most crucial according to their supposed political affinities.

Five of the seven justices who supported the 1973 decision to extend the right to abortion to all American women had, for example, been appointed by Republicans.

Chief Justice John Roberts leads the conservative Supreme Court bloc.

In today's Supreme Court, court grounds x27;agreements between the two camps are much rarer.

The Conservative bloc that John Roberts chairs is also notable for its deep belief that the Supreme Court has in the past agreed to consider issues it should not have had to decide.

This is the argument that these judges used to justify canceling the right to abortion, believing that it was up to the voters of each American state to settle this question of society.

This court also held that it was up to Congress alone, not an independent government agency, to set regulatory standards such as limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

His critics accuse him of willfully ignoring the reality on the ground, with American states so deeply divided, from progressive California to conservative Wyoming.

The Supreme Court also knows that Congress, which is struggling to pass major reforms on societal issues, is not working, said Richard Lazarus, professor of law at the prestigious Harvard University.

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The Democrats have a narrow majority in the US Senate, insufficient to pass the reforms they had promised.

And yet , it threatens the state's ability to ensure the health and well-being of its people, just as the United States and all nations of the world face the greatest environmental challenge of the world. History, he regrets.

It seems unlikely that the conservative bloc of the court will stop in its tracks. Its judges have agreed to examine a series of potentially crucial cases at the start of the school year, notably relating to positive discrimination and the way in which elections are regulated.

After After 50 years of waiting, the Tories have an opportunity to steer the country in a radically different direction, Prof Wermiel says. They won't let this chance pass.